


>°-V.. V 







p'^.c:,;^^. ' 



^^ ** 













V*''-- ^^^ 



0* i^i'f- '^^^ V ^^♦••-•' 




















'•. ""^o. .c*' /^va:-. *i. A* ■ ''f^i^-. *^. .-j^*' / 






vv 
























.° ^^^''^^ 






Ci^ '-'""'^ii.is?^.' ^0 "> * 













•^voc.^- 




/,c:^''^°o 



^ o « " • -» ^ 











^ ^=^0 






^•^ •' 

N < 











^". ^o. 






''^^- J> V ^^^\^^' 



^^ ♦ 










^. C'V' /^V/k^ «.. A^ ♦ 









.* %'Wv* v^^v-^^ %'-W\^* 









,^^'\ "«%«** y\ Mf^//\'«W^^* /-^^ 







- "^ov* 



S^ . 



o^. •■•« 

















-^^K? /^^S.'- ^o,.-!^' »'.;5^!0i'- ■^*>..-? 



OO' ,.'_'J^' 



4 0>. 



* -^*' Ci 









\^:;^*>^^ .-^^^:ri^r. ,v^,!J^./cv 




«i,. ♦.. 






♦ aV *$• 















American Cibic M^^omtion 



SERIES 11, NO. 6 DECEMBER, 1912 



NATIONAL PARKS 



PRESIDENT TAFT ON A NATIONAL 
PARKS BUREAU 

Address to the American Civic Association 

NATIONAL PARKS— THE NEED OF 
THE FUTURE 

Address by AMBASSADOR BRYCE 

THE NEED FOR A BUREAU OF 
NATIONAL PARKS 

Addresses by HON. WALTER L. FISHER. 
Secretary of the Interior 

ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH 
W^HILE? 

Address by MR. J. HORACE McFARLAND, 
President American Civic Association 



DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL AND STATE PARKS 
AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 
General Headquarters, Union Trust Building, Washington, D. C, 






The American Civic Association's 

Movement for a Bureau of 

National Parks 

In pursuance of its general policy in advocacy of 
a larger development and use of the American 
National Parks, their most efficient administration, 
and the most effective means of exploiting them as 
points to be visited and revisited by Americans, and 
by tourists of the world at large, the American Civic 
Association has, for the past three years, advocated 
a specific project for the realization of these ends by 
urging the creation of a Bureau of National Parks. 

At its last two Conventions — those of 191 1 and 
1912 — evening sessions were devoted almost exclu- 
sively to the National Parks. At each of them, Hon. 
Walter L. Fisher, Secretary of the Department of the 
Interior, was the presiding officer. In this pamphlet 
are printed the addresses, by distinguished speakers, 
given at those two meetings. When the American 
people make their demand insistent enough, it may 
be expected that Congress will enact the legislation 
necessary to make possible the large and dignified 
administration and development of the National 
Parks that is recommended in these several 
addresses. 



NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE 5 

creation of a Bureau of National Parks, and this Associa- 
tion was one of the chief agencies that interested itself in 
pushing that bill. We had the bill considered in committee^ 
and I think the general result was quite favorable, but our 
lawmakers — to indulge in a public confidence — were so 
engaged in preparing for the presidential election that they 
made little progress for us, and today we confront precisely 
the same situation; and though I am here to report progress, 
there is not very much progress to report. But I ask this 
Association to continue to use all the influence in its power 
to see that some effective means is provided to improve 
these conditions, and to apply sound principles of admin- 
istration to our National Parks System. 

I cannot claim to be intimately versed in the diplomatic 
history of our country, but I can safely say that I think the 
highest compUment that Great Britain has ever paid us in 
diplomatic matters was when she appointed as Ambassador 
to the United States the author of the ''American Com- 
monwealth." 

I have heard his expected departure from this country 
discussed by many men, and I have yet to hear the first one 
speak of it otherwise than with regret. And yet, I am going 
to admit a little secret feeling that perhaps it is not alto- 
gether without its compensations. The balance is still in 
favor of the regret but I cannot forget that a good many 
years ago when Mr. Bryce came to the city of Chicago to be 
the chief guest of honor at a public dinner it was my privilege 
and honor to sit next to him. The subject of discussion on 
which he was expected to speak was "municipal govern- 
ment," and as the evening wore along and we discussed the 
long menu, we talked about municipal government ourselves, 
and he did most of the talking in the most interesting fashion. 
It was very illuminating, and I was impressed when he said, 
'T wish I could talk to these people in the way I feel free to 
talk to you, but I am a diplomat, and there are some limita- 
tions." Now, if his release from the restraints of diplomacy 
is going to give us the same full, free, frank discussion that I 
had that evening, it will not be wholly without its compensa- 
tions. I hope that this will be the result, and that his interest 
in us and our institutions, or if not in us alone then in those 
institutions that interest not only us but the whole Anglo- 
Saxon world, will continue, and that his keen observations 
and wise reflections will find their way onto paper for our 



6 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

profit and our pleasure. I have the great honor to present 
to you His Excellency the Ambassador from Great Britain 
to the United States. 



ADDRESS OF 
RT. HON. JAMES BRYCE 

British Ambassador to the United States 

NATIONAL PARKS— THE NEED OF THE 
FUTURE 

I have lived long enough in the United States, and have 
known the United States long enough, having come here for 
the first time forty-two years ago, to feel just as much inter- 
ested in all those questions that relate to your welfare, in 
city and in country, as if I were one of your citizens, and I 
hope you will allow me to speak to you with that freedom 
which you would allow to one of your citizens. I do not 
think I need to feel those limitations when discussing a sub- 
ject of this kind, so far removed from politics or any other 
controversial fields. 

There is one thing better even than the City Beautiful, 
and that is the Country Beautiful. I have had a great deal 
of experience in England in dealing with these questions; 
for some years I was chairman, and afterwards a member, 
of a society for preserving commons and open spaces and 
public rights of way, and member of another society for 
securing to the public places of national and historic interest, 
and in the course of such membership I have been led often 
to think of what is our duty to the future, and of the benefits 
which the preservation of places of natural beauty may confer 
on the community. That is a problem which presents itself, 
not only in Great Britain, but all over Europe, and what 
Europe is now is that toward which you in America are 
tending. Europe is a populous, overcrowded continent; 
you will some day be a populous and ultimately perhaps 
even a crowded continent, and it is well to take thought at 
once, before the overcrowding comes on, as to how you 
will deal with the diflaculties which we have had to deal 
with in Europe, so that you may learn as much as possible 
from our experience, and not find too late that the beauty 



NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE 7 

and solitude of nature have been snatched from you by 
private individuals. 

I need not descant upon that which the love of nature is 
and ought to be to each and all of us. The love of nature is 
the very simplest and best of those pleasures the power of 
enjoying which has been implanted in us. It is the most 
easily accessible of pleasures, one which can never be per- 
verted, and one of which (as the old darky said about the 
watermelon) you cannot have too much. It is a pleasure 
which lasts from youth to age; we cannot enjoy it in the 
form of strenuous exercise with the same fullness in age, 
because our physical powers are not the same, but we have 
perhaps a more perfect enjoyment in some other ways, 
because we have the associations and memories of those who 
have in bygone days visited beautiful scenes with us, and 
also the associations with which poetry clothes lovely nature. 
Therefore there is nothing which in the interest of pure 
enjoyment we ought more to desire and study to diffuse 
than the beauties of nature. Fortunately, the love of nature 
is increasing among us. It is one of the tests of civilization 
that people should enjoy this simple pleasure instead of those 
more violent and exciting pleasures which may become 
the source, in extreme forms, of evil. The love of nature, 
I say, is happily increasing among us, and it therefore becomes 
all the more important to find means for safeguarding nature. 
The population is increasing, too, and the number of people 
who desire to enjoy nature, therefore, is growing larger both 
absolutely and in proportion. But, unfortunately, the 
opportunities for enjoying it, except as regards easier loco- 
motion, are not increasing. The world is circumscribed. The 
surface of this little earth of ours is limited, and we cannot 
add to it. When a man finds his house is too small, he builds 
more rooms on to it, but we cannot add to our world; we 
did not make it, it was made for us, and we cannot increase 
its dimensions. All we can do is turn it to the best possible 
account. Now, let us remember that the quantity of natural 
beauty in the world, the number of spots calculated to give 
enjoyment in the highest form, are limited, and are being 
constantly encroached upon. There are four forms that this 
encroachment takes. There is the desire of private persons 
to appropriate beautiful scenery to themselves, by enclos- 
ing it in private grounds around their houses and debarring 
the public from access to it. We in England and Scotland 
have lost some of the most beautiful scenery we possess 



8 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

because it has been taken into private estates. A great deal 
of the finest scenery in Scotland is now practically unap- 
proachable by the pedestrian or the artist or the naturalist 
because people have appropriated it to their private pur- 
poses and keep the public out. This is especially the case 
where the motive for exclusion is what is called sport. Sport 
is understood to mean killing God's creatures, and for the 
sake of killing God's creatures, such as deer and birds, very 
large areas in Britain, and some also in other parts of Europe, 
are shut up. 

Then the enjoyment of natural beauty is largely 
encroached upon by the operations of the lumbermen. That 
is something we do not have to fear in Britain, because 
timber is not there in sufficient quantity to be an article of 
economic value to us, but it is a very serious question here. 
You have prodigious and magnificent forests; there are no 
others comparable for extent and splendor with those you 
possess. These forests, especially those on the Cascade 
range and the Sierra Nevada, are being allowed to be cut 
down ruthlessly by the lumbermen. I do not blame them; 
timber is wanted and they want to drive their trade, but the 
process goes on too fast and much of the charm of nature is 
lost while the interests of the future are forgotten. The 
same thing is happening in the Appalachian ranges in New 
England and the Alleghanies southward from Pennsylvania, 
a superbly beautiful country, where the forests made to be 
the delight of those who wish to ramble among them and 
enjoy the primitive charm of hills and woodland glades, have 
been despoiled. Sometimes the trees have been cut down 
and the land left bare. Sometimes an inextricable tangle of 
small boughs and twigs remains, so that when a dry year 
comes a fire rages among them and the land is so scorched 
that for many long years no great trees will rise to replace 
those that were destroyed. 

And, lastly, there is the question of water power, which 
has in recent years, since the scientific discoveries enabled 
it to be applied in the form of electricity, become an asset of 
great commercial value. You fortunately have a great sup- 
ply of splendid water power. I am far from saying that a 
great deal of it, perhaps most of it, may not be very properly 
used for industrial purposes, but I do say that it has been 
used in some places to the detriment, and even to the ruin, of 
scenery. It has been used in Niagara, for instance, to such 
an extent as to change completely the character of what was 



NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE 9 

once the most beautiful waterfall landscape in the whole 
world. Those of you who did not see it, as I did, forty-two 
years ago, and are not in a position to contrast it now with 
what it was then, cannot know what a wretched shadow of its 
former self it has become — not so much by the diminution 
of the flow of the river as by the hideous erections which 
line the shores. It is not too late to repair what has been done, 
and I hope the day will come when the pristine flow of its 
waters will be restored, and when the devastating agencies 
will have been removed. That we will leave for a future 
which has begun to appreciate scenery more highly than 
men did thirty years ago, when the ruin of which I speak 
was beginning to be wrought. 

Taking all these causes together, you can see how many 
encroachments there are upon the unique beauty of your 
country; and I beg you to consider that, although your 
country is vast and has scope of natural beauty far greater 
than we can boast in little countries like England or Scot- 
land, even your scenery is not inexhaustible, and, with your 
great population and the growing desire to enjoy the beauties 
of nature, you have not any more than you need. For- 
tunately, you have made a good beginning in the work of 
conservation. You have led the world in the creation of 
National Parks. I have seen three or four of these. I have 
been in the Yosemite twice, in the Yellowstone twice, and 
in the splendid forest region which you have around that 
mountain which the people of Seattle now insist on calling 
Mount Rainier — no doubt the name given by Vancouver — 
but which used, when I first explored its forests, to be called 
by the more sonorous Indian name, Tacoma; and also in that 
superb reserve on the north side of the great caiion of the 
Colorado River, as well as in others of minor extent in other 
parts of the country. The creation of such National Parks is 
good, and it has had the admirable effect of setting other 
countries to emulate your example. Australia and New 
Zealand have followed that example. New Zealand, in the 
district of its hot springs and geysers, has made a public 
scenic area something similar to your Yellowstone, though 
not on so extensive a scale; the people of New South Wales 
have set off three beautiful National Parks within thirty or 
forty miles of the capital city of Sydney, taking regions of 
exquisite beauty and keeping them for a source of delight to 
the growing population of that city. Therefore your exam- 
ple is bearing great fruit. I only wish it had come sooner to 



lo AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

us in England and Scotland before we had lost so much con- 
trol of our own natural beauties. 

Let me add that it is not only a question of making more 
parks, but also of keeping the parks in the best condition. I 
heard the other day that a question has been raised as to 
whether automobiles should be admitted in the Yosemite. 
May I be permitted to say a word on that subject? If Adam 
had known what harm the serpent was going to work, he 
would have tried to prevent him from finding lodgment in 
Eden; and if you were to realize what the result of the auto- 
mobile will be in that wonderful, that incomparable valley, 
you will keep it out. The one drawback to enjoyment of 
the Yosemite Valley in the summer and autumn is the dust; 
the granite rock along the roads easily becomes fine sand; 
even the feet of the horses and the wheels of the vehicles 
raise a very great deal of it, which interferes with enjoyment 
as one drives or walks; but the conditions would be grievously 
worse with the swift automobile. And, further, the automo- 
bile would destroy what may be called the sentimental charm 
of the landscape. It is not merely that the dust woutd be 
there, but the whole feeling of the spontaneity and freshness 
of primitive nature would be marred by this modern inven- 
tion, with its din and w^hir and odious smell. Remember, 
moreover, that one cannot really enjoy fine scenery when one 
is traveling at a rate of fifteen or twenty to thirty miles an 
hour. If you want to enjoy the beauty of such landscapes 
as the Yosemite presents, you want to see them slowly. You 
see scenery best of all in walking, when you can stop at any 
moment and enjoy any special point of view, and you can see 
it pretty well in riding or driving because in moving at a 
pace of four or five or six miles an hour you are not going 
too fast to take in the delicate details of the landscape. But 
traveling faster than that — and my experience is that chauf- 
feurs so delight in speed that it is hard to get them to slacken 
even when you bid them — you cannot enjoy the beauty. It 
was often my duty in the British Parhament to oppose bills 
conferring powers to build railways through some of the 
beautiful lake and valley scenery w^e have in Britain. The 
advocates of the bills urged that passengers could enjoy the 
landscape from the windows of the car. But we pointed out 
that you cannot really enjoy a romantic landscape from a 
railway window where the beauties are delicate and the 
scale small. It is different where scenery is on a vast scale, 
so that the railway is insignificant in comparison, and the 



NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE ii 

objects, rocks or mountains, are huge. One may get the big 
views from a train, though they are better seen in walking 
or driving, but you cannot enjoy the small beauties. The 
focus is always changing in your eye, and it is impossible to 
have that kind of enjoyment which a pedestrian, or a painter, 
or any lover of natiure has if you are hurrying past at a swift 
automobile pace. At present the steam-cars stop some 
twelve miles away from the entrance of the Yosemite Park, 
and the drive up to it gives you far more pleasure than a 
journey by rail or automobile possibly could. There are 
plenty of roads for the lovers of speed and noise without 
intruding on these few places where the wood nymphs and 
the water nymphs ought to be allowed to have the landscape 
to themselves. 

Let me pay a personal tribute to the taste and judgment 
with which, as it seemed to me three years ago, the hotels in 
the Yosemite were being managed. There were no offensive 
signs, no advertisements of medicines, no other external 
disfigurements to excite horror, and the inns were all of 
moderate size and not more than two stories high. I earnestly 
hope that the administration will always be continued on these 
lines, with this same regard for landscape beauty. 

Now, a word about additional parks. Although you have 
done splendidly in creating these I have mentioned and some 
others, there are still other places where National Parks are 
wanted. There is a splendid region in the Alleghanies, a 
region of beautiful forests where the tulip trees grow to one 
hundred and fifty, two hundred feet, or more, a mountain 
land on the borders of North Carolina and East Tennessee, 
where there are romantic river valleys and hills clothed with 
luxmriant woods, primitive forests standing as they stood 
before the white man drove the Indians away, filled with 
flowers and traversed by sparkling streams, containing 
everything to deHght the heart of the lover of nature. It 
would be a fine thing to have a tract of three or four hundred 
thousand acres set apart here for the pleasure of the people 
of the South and Middle Atlantic States, for whom it is a 
far cry to the Rockies. Then you might have some additional 
parks in Colorado also. As regards the Northeast Atlantic 
States, what seems to be most wanted is to preserve the 
forests of the White and Green Mountains. Perhaps it is 
not necessary to create in that coimtry a National Park in 
the same sense as that which might be thought requisite in 
the Alleghanies, because the mountains are so high and rocky. 



12 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

and so little ground is suitable for cultivation in the valleys 
that it is not likely they will be taken up, and probably 
hardly necessary that the Government should step in to 
save them. But I believe that in some parts of the White 
Mountains, for instance, it would be an excellent thing to 
create large forest reserves, where the trees should be under 
protection of the National or State Government, cut by them 
as required, and the forests replanted as they are cut. In 
this way you would keep a place where the beauty of the 
forests would remain for all generations, and where the forests 
would be so cared for that the present danger of forest fires 
would be averted. 

There is one question that comes very near to you in 
Baltimore, and also in Washington, on which I would like 
to speak a word. You know there is a great deal of charm- 
ing forest country between Baltimore and Washington. A 
good deal of it is forest of the second growth, some bits of it 
are of the first growth; but even that of the second contains 
a great number of beautiful, fine-grown trees. The land is 
of no considerable value at present, and I believe it could be 
purchased at a very low price. I have heard it suggested 
that thirty-six dollars an acre would be an average price for 
the land, of which there is a great quantity remaining. Hav- 
ing frequently taken walking excursions from Washington 
into the country from ten to fifteen or twenty miles around, 
I have been struck with the beauty and profusion of the 
wild flowers in that district. The flora of that region being a 
blend of the flora of the North Atlantic States with some of 
the plants and flowers which belong to the South Atlantic, 
is of great interest to the scientific botanist. Baltimore, 
Philadelphia, and Washington are all swiftly growing cities. 
What could be done better for the inhabitants of these three 
cities than to secure for their enjoyment a large part of this 
forest land and set it apart, forever free from private purposes 
or use of agriculture, and keep it as a forest reserve to be 
managed scientifically, so that it should pay for the expense 
of working it by the timber which could be cut and sold on 
well-planned scientific lines, and to afford a place where 
people could go and wander about at their own sweet will, 
just as the old settlers did when they first came here? Here 
the automobile would do no harm on the main roads, because 
there would be plenty of byways and forest footpaths. If 
the automobilist wants to be whirled along the roads, let 
him have his way, but keep wide sylvan spaces where those 



NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE 13 

who seek quiet and the sense of communing with nature can 
go out in the early morning from the city and spend a whole 
day enjoying one spot after another where nature has provided 
her simple joys, mingled shade and sunUght, the rusthng of 
the leaves, and the songs of birds. Such things in life the 
man of the cities can have, and when nature has provided 
it in such bountiful measure would it not be a shame to lose 
the benefits she offers? 

I am sensible that I may be perhaps accused of treating 
this subject in a somewhat sentimental way. Well, I confess, 
I am not addressing my arguments to those who think that 
man lives by bread alone, or who think there are no values 
except those measured by dollars and cents. It is because 
I believe the members of this Association are not of that 
mind that I venture to address these considerations to you. 

And let me try to give some logical quality to my state- 
ments by submitting some few propositions in order. 

The world seems likely to last a long, long time, and we 
ought to make provision for the future. 

The population of the world goes on constantly increasing 
and nowhere increasing so fast as in North America. 

A taste for natural beauty is increasing, and, as we hope, 
will go on increasing. 

The places of scenic beauty do not increase, but, on the 
contrary, are in danger of being reduced in number and 
diminished in quantity, and the danger is always increasing 
with the accumulation of wealth, owing to the desire of 
private persons to appropriate these places. There is no 
better service we can render to the masses of the people than 
to set about and preserve for them wide spaces of fine scenery 
for their delight. 

From these propositions I draw the conclusion that it is 
necessary to save what we have got, and to extend the policy 
which you have wisely adopted, by acquiring and preserving 
still further areas for the perpetual enjoyment of the people. 

Let us think of the future. We are trustees of the future. 
We are not here for ourselves alone. All these gifts were 
not given to us to be used by one generation, or with the 
thought of one generation only before our minds. We are 
the heirs of those who have gone before, and charged with 
the duty we owe to those who come after, and there is no 
duty which seems clearer than that of handing on to them 
undiminished facilities for the enjoyment of some of the 
best gifts that the Creator has bestowed upon his children. 



14 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

ADDITIONAL REMARKS BY 
SECRETARY FISHER 

Subsequent to Mr. Bryce, Secretary Fisher spoke further, as follows: 

I suppose my friends, the automobilistS; would regard me 
as lacking in judicial quality if I did not state that most of 
those who apply for admission of automobiles to the Yosem- 
ite, and perhaps to the parks generally, are prepared to 
concede that they should be used merely for access to the 
hotels or stopping-places, and not for conveyance in and 
about the park. That of course is not universally true, because 
some of them do insist that they should be allowed to run 
their automobiles wherever they wish to go. But I wish that 
His Excellency had the opportunity — perhaps he may find 
it — to peruse the voluminous correspondence from the very 
insistent automobilists of the United States, with most 
enthusiastic statistics as to their numbers and growth and 
influence, and the very great detriment that the difficulty 
of access to the parks under the present system causes. The 
question is one which is not without its difficulties. 

It will also perhaps interest the Ambassador and you to 
learn that some practical steps have been already taken, 
particularly with regard to the creation of parks at some of 
the points to which he refers. The Chief Geographer of the 
Geological Survey spent a large part of his summer in Colo- 
rado, examining the region known as Estes Park, which I 
have no doubt the Ambassador knows well and appreciates. 
The question there, as elsewhere, presents serious difficulty, 
largely due to the fact that much of the territory which 
should be included in the park if it is to be made a National 
Park, has already passed into private hands, and the nation 
is confronted with the alternative of either creating the park 
wdth these private holdings inside, or spending very large 
sums in their acquisition. 

In the East the policy to which he refers has already been 
put into some practice. One of the duties of the Secretary 
of the Interior is to sit as a member of the National Forest 
Reservation Commission, which is charged with the duty of 
spending the money which Congress has appropriated for 
the purchase of lands that are regarded as appropriate to 
be reforested and controlled for the improvement or pro- 
tection of navigable streams. You know that question has 



NATIONAL PARKS— NEED OF THE FUTURE 15 

been subject to earnest dispute among scientific men. The 
engineers have differed radically as to the actual effect of 
forest-cover upon stream-flow, and there has been much said 
on both sides, so that the Geological Survey has until recently 
felt that the scientific basis for the affirmative side was not so 
convincing as it should be. They have now conducted an 
elaborate series of observations, and declare themselves pre- 
pared to meet all comers and to demonstrate that forest- 
cover does have beneficial effect upon stream-flow. So we 
have practically completed the purchase of considerable 
areas, in the White Mountains, and in the lower Alleghany 
Range, running from the Smokies and the region to which 
Mr. Bryce has referred, up to New Hampshire. These areas 
wiU simply be held under the Forest Service and will not be 
National Parks in the ordinary sense. So we are making a 
little progress. 

There is one phase of the National Park System work to 
which I briefly referred in my opening remarks, and that is 
the attempt to bring the parks before the public and to let 
the pubUc understand what there is in them and why it will 
be to their interest and pleasure to see them. To this end 
there has been maintained a very informal publicity bureau, 
by Mr. Schmeckebier, who is in charge of publications in 
the Interior Department, and who will now show you some 
of his pictures and tell you something about a few of the 
National Parks. 



ARE NATIONAL PARKS 
WORTH WHILE? 

The one evening session of the Seventh Annual Con- 
vention of the American Civic Association, held at Washing- 
ton, D. C, December 13, 14 and 15, igii^was devoted wholly 
to the national parks of the United States, with especial 
reference to the necessity of creating by Congress a Federal 
Bureau of Parks, within the Department of the Interior, to 
make possible their more adequate administration. 

Hon. Walter L. Fisher, Secretary of the Interior, presided, 
and introduced the several distinguished speakers of the 
evening, all of whom were staunch advocates of a more com- 
prehensive development of the great National Parks. The 
most distinguished speaker was the President of the United 
States, who had in his recent annual message to Congress 
(and later in a special message) strongly recommended the 
creation of a Bureau of National Parks. 

PRESIDENT TAFT'S ADDRESS 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

It costs a good deal of money to run a government, and 
the first ambition of any one responsible for a government 
is economy — at least it ought to be. Therefore, the propo- 
sition to add a bureau or a department sends gooseflesh all 
over the body of anyone who has any sort of responsibihty 
in respect to the finances of the government, for it means 
another nucleus for the increase of governmental expenses. 
Yet a modern government, in order to be what it ought to 
be, must spend money. Utihty involves expense. 

Now, we have in the United States a great many natural 
wonders, and in that lazy way we have in our Government of 
first taking up one thing and then another, we have set aside 
a number of National Parks, of forest reservations, covering 
what ought to be National Parks, and what are called 
"national monuments." We have said to ourselves, "Those 
cannot get away. We have surrounded them by a law which 
makes them necessarily Government property forever,'^and 

(16) 



I 



ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 17 

we will wait in our own good time to make them useful as 
parks to the people of the country. Since the Interior De- 
partment is the 'lumber room' of the Government, into 
which we put everything that we don't know how to classify, 
and don't know what to do with, we will just put them under 
the Secretary of the Interior." That is the condition of the 
National Parks today. 

Those of you who have first been in the Yellowstone Park 
and admired its beauties, and thought of the ability of the 
army engineers to construct such roads as there are there, 
and then have gone on to the Yosemite and have seen its 
beauties, and found the roads not quite so good, and then have 
gone to the Grand Canyon, and found a place where you could 
bury the Yellowstone Canyon and the Yosemite, and never 
know that they were there, and found no roads at all, except 
a railroad that was built at a great expense, and probably at 
great loss, to the side of the Canyon, and only a trail called 
the "Bright Angel Trail," down into the Canyon — down 
which they would not let me go because they were afraid the 
mules could not carry me — you will understand that some- 
thing needs to be done in respect to those parks if we all are 
to enjoy them. 

I am in favor of equality of opportunity, and I resent an 
exclusion from the enjoyment of the wonders of the world 
that it only needs a little money to remove! 

Now the course that was taken in respect to the Yellow- 
stone Park ought to be taken in respect to all of our parks. 
If we are going to have National Parks, we ought to make 
them available to the people, and we ought to build the roads, 
expensive as they may be, in order that those parks may 
become what they are intended to be when Congress creates 
them. And we cannot do that, we cannot carry them on 
effectively, unless we have a bureau which is itself distinctly 
charged with the responsibility for their management and 
for their building up. 

When the Secretary of the Interior, therefore, asked me 
to come here, and told me the subject of the meeting tonight, 
I was glad to come. It is going to add to the expense of the 
Interior Department, and it is going to swell those estimates, 
but it is essential that we should use what the Lord has given 
us in this way, and make it available for all the people. We 
have the money. It is not going to take enough to exhaust the 
Treasury. It is a proper expense, a necessary expense. Let 
us have the bureau. 



i8 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

Secretary Fisher, in following the President, explained in 
detail "The Need for a Bureau of National Parks," pointing 
out the limitations of the existing provisions for their admin- 
istration and emphasizing the larger and more dignified 
administration that would be possible with a regularly 
constituted bureau. 



ADDRESS OF 
HON. WALTER L. FISHER 

Secretary of the Interior 
At Washington, December 13, 1911 

During the past summer, or early fall — I have forgotten 
for the moment the exact date — there was held at the Yellow- 
stone Park the first conference that had ever been held of 
the people who were interested in a practical way in the 
administration of the National Parks and in the various in- 
terests that lead up to and are connected with them, such as 
the railroads and the concessionaires for the hotel privileges, 
transportation privileges, photographic concessions, and 
matters of that sort within the parks. I have not seen the 
tabulation of the roster of that conference, but my recollection 
of it is that there were in attendance something in excess of 
one hundred. This conference was the result of an effort 
which had gone on for some considerable time on the part of 
the chief clerk of the Department of the Interior, Mr. Ucker, 
and Mr. Carr, who is the next in command in that line of 
administration, and the other people connected with the 
administration of the parks in the oflice of the Secretary. 
They were joined in this, however, and had been in the pre- 
liminary arrangements and discussions, as I understand it, 
by the representatives of this organization, the American 
Civic Association, and others who were interested in the gen- 
eral subject of the improvement of our National Parks. The 
conference that was held was a very practical one. There 
were a great number of developments considered by those 
who had been asked to prepare suggestions upon particular 
phases of park management and control and other matters 
connected with the National Parks, and they were followed 
by general discussions from the floor, and, of course, much 
discussion and much talk quietly during the various recesses 
and in the evening. 



ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 19 

The American Civic Association, very naturally and 
properly, was represented at that meeting by its long-time 
president, who is so well known to you and to the country 
at large for his work in this direction. The discussions that 
went on, of course, related mainly to the question of what we 
could do to improve our National Parks to make them more 
accessible to the public, and more attractive to the public. 
I do not know whether I shall in any way intrude upon the 
field which is to be covered by Mr. McFarland in his address, 
or by Senator Smoot, but I think it is proper I should call to 
your attention, for fear that they may not speak of, or be 
able to include in their remarks, some of the things that we 
often pass by, but which may be interesting and instructive 
to you, and I think are to be considered. 

In the first place, the National Parks, like Topsy, have 
"just growed;" at least that is the impression which has been 
produced upon my mind from such investigation and dis- 
cussion as I have given to them. There is no consistent 
theory of legislation with regard to the National Parks. While 
some of them follow the general lines of previous statutes, 
there are wide variations in the statutory authority under 
which the parks are carried on today. The whole park work 
of some states is wholly different from that of others, and 
the situation in detail is almost radically divergent. For 
instance, I find some such question as this: Whether the 
revenues derived from a particular National Park shall be 
available for the use of that park, its improvement and de- 
velopment. We have no consistent action. Two of our 
important parks are without statutory authority to that 
effect, so that such revenue as is derived from the park 
itself in any way has to go back into the general fund of 
the Nation, to be used in such a way as that derived from any 
other general source is used, and appropriated directly and 
specifically for that purpose. In other parks a very large per 
cent of the money available is directly available without 
appropriation. The same thing is true with regard to appro- 
priations which Congress gives to the parks. The importance 
and the political pressure which a particular park possesses 
bring to it appropriations larger than those which may be 
given to another. The result is that we have no consistent 
theory of park administration. 

There are many questions which any one could see at a 
glance are similar in all these parks. Take, for instance, the 
question of road-making. We have practically the same prob- 



20 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

lems in all of the parks with regard to road-making; at least 
in a very considerable number of them. For instance, there 
may be three or four parks where these problems are so 
sinular that the general specifications, the general principles 
that should be apphed, are identical, but they may differ 
from another class of these parks. 

Take many of the other questions that are raised in the 
parks. The whole question of the protection and disposition 
of the trees, the concessions, how the hotel concessions shall 
be managed, what requirements shall be made of the hotel 
proprietors, what regulations shall be made with regard to 
the casual ordinary visitor for his protection and so that he 
may receive the proper sort of service. These are very similar 
in all these parks, or, at all events, it is quite apparent that 
an examination into any given question in one of the parks 
would throw a great deal of light upon the same problem when 
it arises in others of the parks. 

I mention these things, simple as they may seem, to call 
your attention to the singular fact that, although there has 
been a great deal of talk of improved efficiency in our Govern- 
ment affairs, we have absolutely no machinery and no legal 
authority to use any machinery for the coordination of these 
parks so we may state this problem as a whole. The only 
thing we can possibly do in the way of coordination in the 
Interior Department is to see that questions that come to 
us for determination are referred to the same individuals in 
the Department. We can see that the chief clerk, or his 
assistant, shall primarily pass upon these matters; we may 
say that the assistant secretary — as distinguished from the 
first assistant, there being two — shall be the person to whom 
appeals shall go, the person to whom the chief clerk shall go 
for final determination of questions of importance; and we 
do. When we have done that we are through. We may use 
our Division of Mails and Files. We may use our Division 
of Publications and get a certain amount of effective work 
there; and we have Mr. Schmeckebier of that Division, who 
has accomplished some quite remarkable results, in my 
judgment, in the publicity line simply in getting out some 
material to those who are eager to have it. We have found 
that the American public is greedy for real news about the 
national parks; that it is genuinely interested in the National 
Parks and ready to get anything that is not simply per- 
fimctory news upon this subject. But when we have done 
these things the Department of the Interior is through. That 



ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 21 

is all that it can do toward coordination. It would seem 
that it requires practically no argument to convince that the 
one thing we need at once for the efficiency of administration 
and economy in expenditure is to get these parks together 
under some division or bureau where they can receive the 
benefit of a central staff, where we can take the men who are 
now studying road-making, or the management of roads, or 
the sprinkUng problem — which is, after all, to the traveling 
public probably the most important question connected with 
the administration of the parks, because the hotels will do a 
certain amount of looking after their own interests along the 
lines of intelligent and enlightened selfishness. And the 
revenue is there. But if the roads are to be sprinkled and 
taken care of, that must be done purely as a matter of ex- 
penditure, and unless it is looked after by the administrative 
force it will not be looked after at all. 

Now it is perfectly apparent what we ought to have. We 
ought to have some sort of a central organization, something 
in the nature of a bureau, with a head and subordinates, so 
we can get proper expert talent and men who will devote 
their time to these matters, not merely with regard to one 
park but all the parks where the questions arise. It is per- 
fectly apparent that if we were studying any one of these 
questions with regard to any one of these parks, and were 
confined to that and the appropriation for that park, we 
could not get as good a man to study the problems in the 
case of the others. And, in the second place, after we have 
done it once, unless we can utilize his advice and experience 
in some place else we won't get it at all. Then, another thing. 
We get rid of a good many of these isolated and separate 
and distinct appropriations. We would not have several 
appropriations made distinctly for the Yellowstone Park 
and made for the Yosemite Park and so on down the line, 
and each appropriation confined to that particular park or 
some particular function or interest in that park, but we 
would begin to learn that many of these problems are alike, 
that it is not enough to treat one park in one way and another 
in another way. We would have our Bureau bring forward 
the things in our parks which now do not receive particular 
attention, very largely through ignorance of the subject 
because the experience of the particular man who has that 
park in charge has not been so great as has been that of 
some other man. 

The result of all these reflections was that the conference 



22 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

to which I have referred was, so far as we were able to ascer- 
tain, unanimous upon the proposition that there should be 
established as promptly as possible a Bureau of National 
Parks, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, so 
that that Bureau might coordinate these parks and their 
administration and vastly improve their condition and their 
advantage to the pubUc. In tin's conference, this was not 
merely the expression of foresters, of those interested in the 
parks from the theoretical point of view, but the conviction 
of men who attended there representing the large railroad 
systems which lead up to those parks and which are directly 
interested in them. And it was a very significant thing to 
me, as I think it will be to you, to find that the Northern 
Pacific Railroad Company, whose road leads to one of our 
principal parks, was, and is, much in favor, through its rep- 
resentatives, of having a National Park Bureau established, 
embracing other parks as well, purely from a scenic point of 
view. In other words, each particular railroad, which led to 
a particular park, was not interested solely in working for 
that park, but these men have reached that degree of en- 
lightenment in their selfishness — ^in their self-interest — that 
they have come to the conclusion that it was for their own 
best interest to have a National Park Bureau established. 

I have talked this matter over with the President, and 
I know that he is favorably interested in it, and that he gladly 
accepted the suggestion that he come over here this evening 
to meet this audience and express his own views in favor of 
this movement in which the American Civic Association is 
taking so prominent and leading a part. But you do not 
expect me to fill the stage this evening to the exclusion of 
those who have been regularly selected as speakers, and 
particularly not to take the place of, or infringe upon the 
time allowed to, Mr. McFarland, President of the American 
Civic Association. Recognizing, as I do, the practical and 
vigorous manner in which he has gone into this, as he has 
into most of the other problems in which the American 
Civic Association is interested, I feel that we have gained an 
ally — I should not put it that way — that we are allies with 
him, and that we are willing to help him and this Association 
in canying on this work and see that we get from this coming 
Congress, if possible, a bill along the lines of that which 
Senator Smoot has advocated, which will permit of the estab- 
lishment of a bureau of the sort I have described. 

I take pleasure in presenting Mr. McFarland. [Applause.] 



ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 23 

ADDRESS OF 
MR. J. HORACE McFARLAND 

President American Civic Association 
At Washington, December 13, 1911 

"ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE?" 

There can be only a negative reply to the query of the 
subject, unless it be conclusively shown that the National 
Parks add definitely something of value to the life or the 
resources of the Nation. Mere pride of possession cannot 
justify, in democratic America, the removal from develop- 
ment of upward of five millions of acres of the public 
domain. 

THE AMERICAN PARK IDEA 

To establish true value, real worth-whileness, therefore, 
it is necessary to put the National Parks on trial. Indeed, as 
the National Parks are but a larger development of municipal, 
county and state parks, we may quite properly put on the 
stand the whole American park idea. 

It is necessary to call the recent rapid development of a 
certain kind of parks in the United States an American idea, 
for it has no close parallel abroad. Examining, for instance, 
the admirable plan upon which the capital of Belgium has 
been developing since 1572, we note in Brussels an almost 
entire absence of such parks as those of Boston. The present- 
day plan of Paris shows that inside the old city there had 
been provided almost as large an area of cemeteries in which 
to store the dead as of parks in which to restore the energies 
of the living. Great London has barely an acre of parks for 
each thousand of her people — only a tenth of the ideal 
American provision of an acre for every hundred inhabitants. 
Even model Berlin is long on municipal forests and short on 
well-distributed municipal parks. The recently published 
Encyclopedia Britannica, written abroad, devotes just 
31 lines to the discussion of the word "park," and 17 of these 
lines refer to its military significance ! 

So the American service park is a New World idea, and 
it is even quite new in the New World; for, at the date of the 
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, parks in the United 
States were few in number, small in extent, and largely upon 
European models. Within five years, indeed, a contest has 



24 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

raged in Greater New York around the idea of diverting a 
portion of Central Park from the service of the relatively 
few in the way of purely pleasure development to the service 
of the very many through the establishment of well-equipped 
playgrounds. 

Yet inquiry has developed that, in 1909, 74 American 
cities owned 41,576 acres of parks, an average of about four- 
tenths of an acre to the 100 of their population, and spent 
upon them that year for maintenance — that is, to make them 
of service to the people — an average of $91.42 per acre. 
Some of these cities are in what I call the honor class of 
American communities, in that they own and maintain an 
acre or more of parks for each hundred of their people. 
Such cities are Council Bluffs, Minneapolis, Harrisburg, 
Colorado Springs and Springfield, 111. 

PLAYGROUNDS— THE FIRST AIDS TO 
CHILDHOOD 

This American service park idea, into which we are in- 
quiring critically as to its true value, its relative efficiency, 
has its intensive development in modern playgrounds — those 
first aids to endangered American childhood, of which few 
examples are found abroad, and not nearly enough in our 
own county. We have multiplied schools in which to culti- 
vate the brain, but have delayed long in providing adequate 
facilities to develop and keep in order the body which houses 
the brain. Our cemeteries, our juvenile courts and our 
reform schools have increased much more rapidly than the 
means by which the city can hold back the population of the 
one and decrease the business of the others. 

Chicago, for instance, has notably discovered the truth 
as to this relation between crime and disorder and the small 
park and social center. It is a departing relation; for in 1909 
it was discovered that within a half-mile radius of her twelve 
splendidly equipped and maintained breathing-spots, veri- 
table life-saving stations in the midst of the sea of industrial 
strain and stress, juvenile delinquency had decreased 44 per 
cent, while in the same year it had increased 1 1 per cent in 
the city as a whole. 

Here, then, is the first evidence for the defendant at the 
bar — the American park idea. The service park, the ordered 
and supervised playground, act immediately and favorably 
on the health and the orderliness of the community, and 



ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 25 

consequently increase materially the average of individual 
efficiency. In other words, they pay dividends in humanity. 

AMERICAN PARK SYSTEMS 

The park idea we are examining has a development in 
another way. The joining of separated parks by a highway 
of green, usually called a parkway, is the step taken when a 
community develops from the simple having of parks to the 
proud possession of a park system. The one may merely 
have happened; the other is always the result of a careful 
plan. Minneapolis, Hartford, Kansas City, Boston, Buffalo 
and other prosperous and advanced American cities have 
such systems. Chicago has a great plan for a park system, 
and owns some links in the chain which is to bind it together. 

An adequate park system, looking toward the future of 
the city, and giving to every inhabitant easy access without 
expense for transportation to the relief of a spot of green, to 
the recreation of a playground, is the most profitable invest- 
ment a city can make. It is profitable in promoting the wel- 
fare of the people; it is profitable in providing along its borders 
increased taxable values. For instance, Kansas City's Paseo, 
cut through her length, has cleared fully its cost in increased 
values, and even old Central Park in New York has returned 
to the city more than eight times the total amount spent in 
purchase and development within sixty years. 

I bring then before the court the second witness for the 
character and worth-whileness of the American park idea. 
Well-considered park improvements always react favorably 
upon community values. Proper park investments are usually 
placed at what amounts to compound increment. 

WHAT FOSTERS TRUE PATRIOTISM? 

But there is another witness for the defendant. It is 
typified in the American flag, the emblem of our national 
existence, the concrete, visible essence of that love of country 
which manifests itself in the essential virtue of patriotism. 
Consider what it is that inspires us as we sing the national 
hymn. Is it our wonder of mining, showing in the hideous 
ore dumps, the sordid mining village? Is it in the burned- 
over waste that has followed the cutting of much of our forest 
wealth? Is it the powerhouse in which is harnessed the beauty 
of Niagara? Is it the smoking factory chimneys, the houses 



26 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

of the grimy mill town, the malodorous wharves along our 
navigable rivers? Is it even the lofty metropolitan sky- 
scraper, or the great transcontinental steel highway? 

No; not one of these produces patriotism. Listen to 
the most sordid materialist who is American in birth or resi- 
dence, as he boasts: it is always of the beauty of his town, 
his state, his country! Our devotion to the flag begins in that 
love of country which its beauty has begotten; it may end, 
at the last supreme test, in the beauty of soul that makes 
the patriot ready to die for his country in battle — if just 
battle there may ever again be. 

Now these parks that have been presented to you, and 
those I am yet to present, are, all of them, planned to show 
forth the beauty of the land. Never a service park have I 
seen or heard of that failed to use to the utmost the trees 
and the plants, the grass and the flow^ers that stand for our 
native land. Playgrounds are sometimes, perforce, on limited 
city spaces, but always there is at least the attempt to get 
the blue of the sky opened to the boys and girls. Into the 
brick and concrete heart of the city the park brings a little 
of the primeval outdoors, and here grows best the love of 
country which sees with adoration the waving stars and 
stripes. 

So I hold that, in safeguarding and stimulating the essen- 
tial virtue of patriotism, the beauty of the American park 
stands forth as most of all worth while. I urge that, as an 
antidote to the teachings of social disorder, as a counter- 
irritant to the saloon, as a relentless foe to the slum, the 
American park idea in the playground is most completely 
justified. 

THE NATION'S LARGER PLAYGROUNDS 

It is but a step across the coimtry and the state park to 
the National Park. There come, increasingly in these work- 
filled American days, times when the tired spirit seeks a 
wider space for change and rest than any city, or indeed, any 
state, can provide. The deep forests of the Sierras call, the 
snow-capped peaks of the Rockies beckon. The roar of 
Niagara can drown the buzz of the ticker. Old Faithful's 
gleaming column of silver spray shuts off the balance-sheet. 
El Capitan makes puny the capitol of any state, or of the 
nation. The camp under the oaks of the Hetch-Hetchy 
Valley, near the ripple of the Tuolumne, restores vigor, up- 



ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 27 

lifts the wearied spirit. What cathedral of man's building 
shows forth the power of God unto health of soul as does the 
Grand Canyon of the Colorado? The glacier wonderland 
of the Northwest gives us lessons on the building of the 
continent, and the giant sequoias of the Pacific Slope teach 
us of our own littleness. 

These National Parks, then, are our larger playgrounds. 
Everything that the limited scope of the city park can do 
as quick aid to the citizen, they are ready to do more thor- 
oughly, on a greater scale. 

To the vast open spaces, the sight of great mountains, the 
opportunity to live a mile or more higher up, they add pos- 
sibiUties of real life in the open just touched upon as yet, 
even though more than three thousand horses this year 
drew their owners on camping trips into the Yellowstone 
alone. 

The national playgrounds, too, can, if they are held in- 
violable, preserve for us, as no minor possessions can, our 
unique scenic wonders, our great natural mysteries. The 
spouting geyser basins and marvelous hot springs of the 
Yellowstone, the atmospheric splendors of the Grand Canyon 
of the Colorado, the silver threads of the Falls of the Yosem- 
ite, the ancient homes of the cliff-dwellers on the Mesa 
Verde, the ice marvels of the Montana glaciers, the blue 
marvel of Crater Lake, the towering temples amid the big 
trees of the Sierras — how long would they last unharmed and 
free to all the people if the hand of the Federal Government 
was withdrawn from them? Ask harassed, harnessed Niagara 
— depending right now for its scenic life upon the will of this 
Congress — after, indeed. Congress alone has saved it until 
now from state neglect ! 

THE DIFFERING FUNCTIONS OF FORESTS 
AND PARKS 

The nation now has, it should be said, vast and admirably 
handled national forests, potential with profit for all the 
people. But there must be no confusion between the differ- 
ing functions of the forests and the parks. 

The primary function of the national forests is to supply 
lumber. The primary function of the national parks is to 
maintain in healthful efficiency the lives of the people who 
must use that lumber. The forests are the nation's reserve 
wood-lots. The parks are the nation's reserve for the main- 



28 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

tenance of individual patriotism and federal solidarity. The 
true ideal of their maintenance does not run parallel to the 
making of the most timber, or the most pasturage, or the 
most water-power. 

Our National Parks are young. They are yet undeveloped 
to any considerable extent. But one of them, the Yellow- 
stone, is comfortably accessible. Their value to the nation 
is potential, more than instant, simply because they are not, 
as a whole, yet known to our people. The nearest east of 
them is fifteen hundred miles west of the country's center 
of population in Indiana. Our people yet cross three thou- 
sand miles of salt water to see less impressive scenery, less 
striking wonders, less inspiring majesty in canyon, waterfall 
and geyser, than they have not seen at home, because the 
way to Europe has been made broad, comfortable and 
''fashionable!" 

THE NATIONAL PARKS BUT LITTLE USED 

In 1 910, barely two hundred thousand visitors to our 
thirteen National Parks and our twenty-eight national 
monuments were reported, but all the east-bound Atlantic 
greyhounds were crowded to their capacity. We have not yet 
begun to use the National Parks; we have not commenced to 
attract to them a share of the golden travel tide which is said 
to have taken from America to Europe $350,000,000 in 19 10. 

Indeed, we are not ready for visitors in our National Parks. 
We have, as yet, no National Park System. The parks have 
just happened; they are not the result of such an overlooking 
of the national domain as would, and ought to, result in a 
coordinated system. There is no adequately organized 
control of the National Parks. With 41 National Parks and 
moniunents, aggregating an area larger than two sovereign 
states, and containing priceless glories of scenery and wonders 
of nature, we do not have as efficient a provision for admin- 
istration as is possessed by many a city of but fifty thousand 
inhabitants for its hundred or so acres! In a lamentable num- 
ber of cases, the administration consists solely in the posting 
of a few warning notices I 

LACK OF PARK MANAGEMENT 

Nowhere in official Washington can an inquirer find an 
office of the National Parks, or a desk devoted solely to their 



I 



ARE NATIONAL PARKS WORTH WHILE? 29 

management. By passing aromid through three departments, 
and consulting clerks who have taken on the extra work of 
doing what they can for the nation's playgrounds, it is pos- 
sible to come at a little information. 

This is no one's fault. Uncle Sam has simply not waked 
up about his precious parks. He has not thrown over them 
the mantle of any complete legal protection — only the Yel- 
lowstone has any adequate legal status, and the Yosemite is 
technically a forest reserve. Selfish and greedy assaults 
have been made upon the parks, and it is under a legal 
"joker" that San Francisco is now seeking to take to herself 
without having in ten years shown any adequate engineering 
reason for the assault, nearly half of the Yosemite. Three 
years ago several of us combined to scotch and kill four 
vicious legislative snakes under which any one might have 
condemned at $2.50 per acre the Great Falls of the Yellow- 
stone, or even entered upon a national cemetery for the 
production of electric power at the same price for the land ! 

Now there is light and a determination to do as well for 
the nation as any little city does for itself. The Great Father 
of the nation, who honors us tonight by his presence, has 
been the unswerving friend of the nation's scenic possessions. 
He has consistently stood for the people's interest in Niagara; 
he now stands for their interest in the nation's parks. 

His Secretary of the Interior, the presiding officer of the 
evening, has appUed his great constructive ability to the 
national park problem. It was at his invitation that the first 
National Park Conference was held in September last. He 
has visited most of the parks, and, coming from a city where 
intensive park development has proceeded to be a greater 
beneficence than in any other in the world, he comprehends 
fully the American service park idea. 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL PARKS 

There is, then, hope for the parks. The Congress will not 
refuse, I am sure, to enact legislation creating a Bureau of 
National Parks, to the custody of which all the nation's 
pearls of great price shall be entrusted. Under such a 
Dureau, aided by a commission of national prominence and 
scope, I predict that there will be undertaken not only such 
ordering of the parks as will vastly increase their use and their 
usefulness, but such a survey of the land as will result in the 
establishment of many new National Parks, before it is too late. 



30 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

Niagara, never more in danger than at this moment, 
must eventually, if it is to be a cataract and not a catastrophe, 
come under the federal mantle as a national reservation, as 
President Taft has again recently urged. In no other way 
can America be saved from the lasting disgrace that now 
threatens our most notable natural wonder. A nation that 
can afford a Panama Canal cannot afford a dry Niagara! 

There is something inspiring in the thought of a National 
Park sacred to the memory of the great liberator, and adding 
to the beauty and dignity of the city in which he poured out 
his last full measure of devotion. A Lincoln Memorial 
National Park, joining the lovely forests between Washington 
and Baltimore and AnnapoUs to the Potomac, would be a 
thousand times more fitting tribute to the glory of our first 
martyr than a mere commercial highway. 

He whose genius made the nation, and whose wisdom 
planned this Federal City to be a fitting capital for a hundred 
milHons of free people when yet there were but a scant three 
millions clinging to the Atlantic seaboard, ought also to be 
thus memorialized. Why shall not Mount Vernon and its 
environs come into a great Washington Memorial National 
Park which shall link together anew, as it reaches the 
Potomac, the fame of our two greatest presidents, and for- 
ever blot out a line once fought over in civil warfare? 

Nothing is more certain than that eventually the nation 
will come to own memorial areas, which shall serve a double 
purpose in their tributes to the departed great and their 
beneficence to the living. Delay means but enhanced and 
compounded cost. With such a truly patriotic provision for 
the future as well as the present as would be involved in the 
creation of a great National Park System, available to the 
people of the East as well as to those of the West, our federal 
scenic possessions would come to attract the travel of the 
world. Inadequate though they are now, inaccessible as 
they are now, unadministered as they are now, our National 
Parks have added very definitely to the resources of our people, 
and are well worth while. When they shall have been given 
the attention that is in the minds of our President and our 
Secretary of the Interior, they will increase in efficiency, in 
beauty, in extent, and in benefits open to all the people, so 
that they will even more be entirely worth while. 



For a Bureau of 
National Parks 

SPECIAL MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT TAFT TO 
CONGRESS, FEBRUARY 2, 1912 

**I earnestly recommend the establish- 
ment of a Bureau of National Parks. Such 
legislation is essential to the proper manage- 
ment of those wondrous manifestations of 
nature, so startling and so beautiful that 
everyone recognizes the obligations of the 
Government to preserve them for the edifica- 
tion and recreation of the people. 

**The Yellowstone Park, the Yosemite, 
the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, the Glacier 
National Park and the Mount Rainier National 
Park and others furnish appropriate in- 
stances. In only one case have we made 
anything like adequate preparation for the 
use of a park by the public. That case is 
the Yellowstone National Park. Every con- 
sideration of patriotism and the love of na- 
ture and of beauty and of art requires us to 
expend money enough to bring all these 
natural wonders within easy reach of our 
people. The first step in that direction is 
the establishment of a responsible bureau, 
which shall take upon itself the burden of 
supervising the parks and of making recom- 
mendations as to the best method of improv- 
ing their accessibility and usefulness. '' 



American Civic Association 



President 
J. HORACE McFARLAND, Harrisburg, Pa. 

First Vice-President 
JOHN NOLEN, Cambridge. Mass. 

Treasurer 
WILLIAM B. ROWLAND, New York. 

Secretary 
RICHARD B. WATROUS, Washington, D. C. 

Vice-Presidents 
CLINTON ROGERS WOODRUFF, Philadelphia. 
GEORGE B. DEALEY, Dallas, Texas. 
MRS. EDWARD W. BIDDLE, Carlisle, Pa. 
GEORGE W. MARSTON, San Diego, CaL 
J. LOCKIE WILSON, Toronto, Canada. 
CHARLES H. WACKER, Chicago. 111. 

Executive Board 
William P. Bancroft, Wilmington, Miss Zona Gale, Portage, Wis. 

^^'- Edward Hatch, Jr., New York. 

Henry A. Barker, Providence, R. I. Harold J. Rowland, Montclair, N. J. 
Miss Mabel T. Boardman, Washing- Dr. Woods Hutchinson, New York. 

ton, D. C. ^^g ^ J, McCrea, Chicago, III. 

LEROY J. BOUGHNER, MmneapollS, », t rr -hr r^i 

j^jjjQ ' ^ ' Miss Louise Klein Miller, Cleve- 



land, Ohio. 
J. C. Nichols, Kansas City, Mo. 
Frederick Law Olmsted, Brookline, 



Frank Chapin Bray, New York. 

Arnold W. Brunner, New York. 

H. K. Bush-Brown, Washington, D. C. Mass 

Mrs. Caroline Bartlett Crane, John H. Patterson, Dayton, Ohio. 

Kalamazoo, Mich. j^^.^ ^ jj. Scott, Perth, Ontario, 
Charles M. Dow, Jamestown, N. Y. Canada. 

Mrs. James S. Frick, Baltimore, Md. George Stephens, Charlotte, N. C 



Address all general communications 

to the Main Office of the Association 

UNION TRUST BUILDING 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 



4 AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION 

administration of these parks. Each park had a superin- 
tendent and such employees under him as the generosity of 
Congress at the particular time happened to give. That gen- 
erosity, very naturally and inevitably, as things are done m 
this government, and in most others, varied with the political 
influence and the energy of the advocates of the particular 
park. If it so happened that the people immediately con- 
nected with, or concerned in a particular park, were active 
and influential, they secured larger appropriations than 
others; but no attempt to make these things uniform or to 
conform to any standard of administration had ever been 
made, so far as I am able to discover. It was on that account 
that we held last year at the Yellowstone National Park the 
first National Conference on this subject ever held in this 
country. At that Conference we had not only the superin- 
tendents and administrative officials of all the National 
Parks, but also representatives of the concessionaires. The 
principal railroads concerned in affording transportation 
facilities were also represented, and we took up and dis- 
cussed in a very broad way the problems that confront 
National Park administration,— the questions of making 
them better known and more accessible to the public, and 
the important questions of the treatment of the public after 
it has arrived at the parks. There was then but one agency 
by which any attempt to administer the parks in a collec- 
tive manner was provided, and that agency was the Chief 
Clerk of the Department of the Interior, who has acted 
pretty much as the Department of the Interior itself has 
acted, as a "catch-all" for the things that can find no con- 
venient lodgment elsewhere. The only way in which the 
problems in one park, or the solutions of those problems, 
bore any relation to those in another, was through the 
happenstance' that all had to go through the channel of 
the Chief Clerk's office. If we had worked out a problem in 
■connection with one park, it was always a mere chance if 
the results benefited any other. You can see how unsound 
and uneconomic such a system was. I have used the past 
tense in telUng of these conditions, but I may say that the 
conditions of last year are also the conditions of this year, 
that there has been no improvement except as we have 
brought it about at arm's length and by main force under the 
same provisions of law and of appropriation acts that we 

had before. _ t^-h r ^.i. 

We did draw up and present to Congress a BiU for the 



lO 



NATIONAL PARKS— THE 
NEED OF THE FUTURE 

At the Eighth Annual Convention of the American Civic 
Association, held at Baltimore, November 20, 191 2, the 
principal address was deUvered by Rt. Hon. James Bryce, 
British Ambassador, on the subject "National Parks — the 
Need of the Future." Introducing the president of the 
American Civic Association, Mr. J. Horace McFarland, and 
later Mr. Bryce, Hon. Walter L. Fisher, Secretary of the 
Interior, presiding, said: 

OPENING ADDRESS OF 
HON. WALTER L. FISHER 

Secretary of the Interior 
At Baltimore, November 20, 1912 

Ladies and Gentlemen: 

A year ago I had the honor of presiding at the meeting of 
this Association, at which the President of the United States 
spoke on the subject of a National Parks Bureau. I believe 
we are looking forward this evening to an honor only tech- 
nically second to that, a meeting at which the representative 
of Great Britain in this country is to address you on the same 
general subject. 

At that meeting last year it was made very clear, I thought, 
that our National Park administration was in urgent need 
of some reorganization and some effective coordination. It 
will do no harm to repeat briefly the situation of the National 
Parks of this country. A year ago they were, as they had 
been from the beginning, simply the creatures of separate 
statutes, each one prescribing the rules under which a particu- 
lar park should be organized, established and governed, 
and each differing in important particulars from the others. 
Except in so far as the first statute, passed by the Federal 
Congress, had served as a model for some of the later acts, 
there was no uniformity in the legislation, and no machinery 
of any kind had been established for the government or 

(3) 



ios w 



- -hip -^ 














xi°.*. .^ 






'^^ •TT,.' o.'*-' 







v" *':^'* "o. 






-.* <^^ -^x** • 



If jp-n^^ -: 









v*^.'\y V'^^-\o^ "*.*'"^'^v 







-OK 



•; "^ 0^ 



'^^. ^^'f ** .y "q.;'*^-* .O'^ 



^^•^^. ^ 




V^ .*i»X*f*. <^ ^0' .•i*^'. '^ v 



. ..^^/ /\ •^^♦* /\ \W-° /\ "-: 





f -^ 



:- -ov* 




j9 -Kf. V 








A°^ 



« .>"^^ * 



;5°^ 
















"^-^^ :«'^ ""-^^' •«:"--/;«» 















4<^ 






.P f^ .a 






- ^^o-^^^^ V 



^--0^ 

A^^ 

















.«:*°^ 









